Bodies (Animal Instincts Book 1)

Prologue

Ashley! Ashley, where are you! Ashley Templeton, if you can hear me, you'd better come out right now or so help me - "

"Mom!" Finally, to her mother's relief, ten-year-old Ashley Templeton appeared, racing breathlessly. She seemed to have just materialized from the mist and trees, as if the forest had thought to steal her away then thought better of it, like: Here, take her back. We don't want her after all.

"Don't run," Ashley's mother chided her. The floor was uneven and marked with stones and restless roots. Ashley obediently slowed her pace, but just before reaching her mother, she was overcome with excitement and swung her skinny hands around her mother's bare calves.

"Mom, guess what I saw!"

"Ashley, how many times have I told you not to run off into the trees by yourself like that?"

"But, Mom - "

"Come on. Your father's waiting." She started to drag Ashley along, but Ashley dug her heels into the ground.

"Mom! I saw a man out there."

Gail Templeton ducked her head and peered at her daughter. "What? What man? Where?"

"He was in the trees."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She bent down now, clutching her daughter's arms. "Did he try to approach you?"

"Nope. I think maybe he heard me, because he got scared and started running away. I was watching him run and run and then he ... "

"What?"

"Then he was gone. But not really gone. He became a wolf, Mom! One minute, he was like you or me, and the next, he was this big brown wolf!"

At that age, Ashley was too young to understand the impatient, frustrated look that fell over her mother's features. Gail Templeton said nothing at first, unfolding her legs and towering over her daughter. How small and innocent Ashley looked to her right then.

Ashley stared up at her mother, waiting for an excited reaction that didn't come.

"For goodness sake, Ashley. You shouldn't make up stories like that."

"W-what? But it's not a story."

"You know, you had me really worried for a minute."

"But I saw it."

"Enough. Come on."

Ashley protested as her mother dragged her away, but only feebly. Her mother's hand on her arm was firm and insistent, and she was pulling her along at such a quick pace, Ashley soon got tired of resisting.

Still, Ashley knew what she'd seen. She knew it had been real. She clung to this fiercely, if secretly, much like how we cling to our most precious memories even as time tries to take them away from us. Thinking over the look on her mother's face earlier, she realized that it had been a mistake to open her mouth at all.

Just before her mother yanked her inside the house, she looked over her shoulder, gazing at the towering, spiny trees and thinking that there are some truths the world is just not ready for.